Successful manufacturing depends on yield, as well as the efficiency in time-to-market. For example, semiconductor manufacturing depends on yield of wafers and dies, as well as the time to market of the wafers and dies. Manufacturers maximize the yield of products early in the product life cycle to maximize profit before the market becomes saturated with competing products. Early identification of manufacturing defects is critical to this process. The earlier a product defect can be identified, the greater the opportunity for minimizing product loss as a result of that defect.
Some traditional solutions that contribute to maximizing yield utilize Yield Management Software (YMS). A current YMS solution can use end-of-the-line yield to identify process events associated with a known defect in a manufacturing process after the manufacturing process has completed. The current YMS solution can correlate test results of the end-of-the-line yield to processes used throughout the line to locate opportunities to improve yield. Since the manufacturing process (e.g., of a wafer) may take several weeks to complete in a typical manufacturing facility, current YMS solutions are generally used after the manufacturing has completed to analyze the manufacturing process. Data can be analyzed after the production run is complete to identify how a product defect may have occurred. However, the analysis and identification of the defective product occurs after a defective product has already been produced. Moreover, these traditional solutions do not automate or apply the integration of any real-time information acquired via YMS analysis to future in-line metrology and process data.